Stranding yourself on the spit on the way into the Hamble River is bad news on any day of the week. You know there several hours ahead during which you are the physical embodiment of schadenfreude, sat in stocks of your own making as the coming and going world laughs up its sleeve. As you perch ever more precariously on vertiginous coamings, your mast tilts steadily towards the horizontal like the needle of your own personal anguishometer.

The search for a silver lining may lead you to think, ‘At least it’s a Monday, there won’t be too many people about.’ Unfortunately your silver lining turns out to be a slightly bigger cloud, just behind the one overhead, because you’ve run aground on a day when much of Britain’s yachting press is being entertained by a marine electronics company, trundling by on boats every few minutes.